Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
Fact-based, data-driven research and analysis to advance democratic debate on vital issues shaping people’s lives.
Center for Economic and Policy Research
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW
Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202-293-5380
Fax: 202-588-1356
https://cepr.net
The official German unemployment rate includes people working part-time who would like full-time jobs. For this reason it is not directly comparable to the unemployment rate in the United States. Fortunately the OECD produces a harmonized unemployment rate for its members which is directly comparable.
For this reason it was needlessly misleading for the NYT to tell readers that the unemployment rate across Germany is 6.5 percent. This refers to the official Germany government measure. The OECD harmonized unemployment rate for Germany is 5.2 percent.